A Mystery at the Castle
by Tipplynne
Summary: Wilda Tallamaja Mellivora, a woman teetering on the edge of the magical/muggle world, takes over the position of Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts. Not entirely certain she wants to be a witch, she has spent most of her adult life masquerading as a muggle. Circumstances have brought her back to the magical world, and secretly she is trying to find the killer of an old friend.
1. Chapter 1

_Not your average science project..._

The great slab of a man looked beseechingly across the table at her, his eyes big and dark, a hopeful smile tugging gently at the corners of his lips. His massive beard and hair seemed to constantly and imperceptibly shift around that wide, fatherly face. He was just beautiful, like some magnificent, large creature in its element. A resting rhino, or hippo perhaps. She shook herself and realised she had to answer him something… ah yes. They were negotiating.

"That sounds good to me, Hagrid. I'll give you info on where she's most likely to wander of an evening, and you let me assist you with some of the larger and more… interesting creatures you come across during your travels here in France?"

She had almost said dangerous. Which would have been fatal to her ends; that word might have shaken him out of his reverie and reminded him that she was still a student. She smiled encouragingly at him, and tried to affect just the right amounts of naivety and wisdom in her posture. He nodded absentmindedly, clearly already dreaming up "chance encounters" with his marvellous Madame Maxine, then seemed to focus back on her.

"Yer got a lot of gumption, saying it quite like tha'."

He drawled on;

"I can see a stout heart a mile away and I would have happily taken yer on as an apprentice anyway."

He leaned back, resting his hands on the edge of the table and gave her a stern look.

"All I asked was fer a few tips on how one might go about getting yer head mistress' attention, seein' that you already clearly have. But I wouldn't want yer to betray her privacy or nothin'."

She suddenly felt guilty about seeing this so business-like. She was overthinking things again. The consternation that crossed her face was definitely real, and while she shifted and crossed her legs, she gripped the hem of her uniform in anxiety. How to correct this? She so desperately wanted to see the incredible things this man had spoken about.

"Madame Maxine and I… well, we just have an understanding. I'm not treated special by her in any way. She recognises the wild in me, I suppose, and has made one or two subtle exceptions in my case. She really is lovely. Harsh, but lovely…"

The last part she more mused out loud than actually spoke. She rode the wave of honest emotions and landed smoothly on the shore of pretence;

"I think she is lonely though… and a friend would probably be good for her. But Ialso think she is resistant to making friends, and a few unseen nudges from those that care about her might remedy the situation."

That _had_ been subtle manipulation, but she hoped Hagrid would hear a different form of subtlety in that. He was simple in some ways, but quite canny in others. It worked like a charm, though, the giant leaned forward conspiratorially and beamed at her.

"Yer got gumption allright! A good and loyal student yer are. A pity yer not in 'ogwarts. I know three friends there, always getting their noses in where they don't belong and playin' right heroes. Yer wouldn't have been lonely growing up there…"

He trailed off and looked at her knowingly, sadly. She recognised the pity in his dark, warm eyes and it made her a tiny bit angry, in spite of herself. She was a loner, and that did not mean lonely! She was about to retort something, when there was a knock at the door.

* * *

_Home for the holidays..._

Malastru opened the door and the hateful thing glided in. She forced herself not to shy away. By now she knew bitterly what to expect, but she couldn't have predicted the jarring clarity with which the details would return…

_The sight of Daxl dragging his brutalised body toward her, the clear pain and anguish in his small, bright eyes, the expectation that she would go to him and make things right. Somehow she could sense how intensely he was immersed in his pain, how keenly he could feel his own insides scraping against gritty earth and deadening leaves. She could smell all the parts of him that were broken, the burnt fur and cooked fat, the sickeningly sweet smell of bile from far too high up in the intestine and the rich smell of infection that had set into his abdomen some hours ago. She wanted to scream in rage and bone-deep misery but forced herself to stay rooted to the spot. To remember and honour his enchanted existence._

_Her beautiful, mischievous and sensory Daxl. All those hours had she followed him as a child, his sneaking form inquisitively assessing the forest floor. She had watched him endlessly with dark fascination. Him, voyeuristically smelling the secreted and excreted unmentionables that other animals left behind, taking immense shuddering pleasure in his own queer form of aromatherapy. She remembered with a swelling in her heart how he had allowed her to approach one day, and stroke his glossy grey fur as he writhed around in the aftermath of another pair of animals' mating spot, the scent of musk so fresh, even her blood rushed a little. How he rolled around in an ecstasy on the ground where it had happened; his warm, firm belly under her fingertips, then his sleek neck and how she had held her breath (terrified of those sharp little canines) when he had pushed his hot, wet nose frantically against her palm and then between her fingers only to flop back over on the ground, writhing and twittering and snorting softly in an agony to soak it all up._

_And oh god, she had left him there to suffer his slow agonising death..._

Her eyes burned with salty, unshed tears and her heart seemed to stutter with guilt all over again. But she would not fail him again today. There was no longer the horrifying screams of her demented, lovable "grandmother" pulling her away from his bright, innocent and desperate eyes.

And then there was no Daxl, he was gone. Even the Dementor's presence seemed to have diminished. There was only this man smiling with sick pleasure down at her, all too pleased to see how she had suffered in the presence of the monster, how she had survived it. Like he had somehow made her better, stronger, and she fucking _hated_ him for it.

* * *

_All grown up..._

Later in life, Wilda would call upon a different set of memories in the presence of Dementors. At a muggle research centre in the UK she lectured on several ethological aspects of zoology. Her knowledge of creatures extended not only to the magical ones, partly owing to the fact that her rustic skills with a wand were somewhat lacking according to conventional magical community. She felt kinship with all non-humans and this included non-magical animals, and her understanding of them lent itself to great insights to animal behaviour. It was during this time that there was some unrest in the wizarding world, and after the muggle students filed out of the lecture venue, a Dementor came drifting in. It hovered up toward the ceiling as she gasped, and then came rushing down toward her. Even as she pulled out her wand and inhaled to chant, the memory was welling up like warm, golden honey behind her eyes…

_… the smell of pine oil and the sensation of icy cold water clinging to her puckered skin. The old woman's gnarled fingernails and buckled finger joints occasionally digging into her back as she scrubbed Wilda with a dried root. Her voice come back clearly, scratchy and high pitched, and when she hummed it brought to mind the distorted purring of a sick cat they had once nursed back to health. The crazy old bat was telling her another story of her origins,_

_"Ja Wilda, your mother she was a huldra and so are you! Hmmm, uhmmm mmm! She dropped you of with me when you was child and told me she had killed the evil man who had forced the seed into her." _

_She finished scratching at Wilda's back and tugged her head violently back to attack the girl's filthy hair. Wilda stared up into the forest canopy, sighed and retorted,_

_"Last time you told me this story you said my father had been your son and that he was a good man. And I cannot be huldra, Lottie, I have no tail and my back is not hollow." _

_Still staring up into the canopy, the little girl waited for the admonition that would occasionally come after a direct contradiction of the old squib's insane stories. The last time she had heard this tirade, her huldra mother had been the evil one, and had put her infantile form inside a frog. Lottie had spat in the frogs mouth to kill it and then cut her out. But no wheezing admonishment came._

_The tugging on her wild hair stopped and the crone's twisted, skinny fingers rested on her shoulders. The old woman seemed to be thinking, probably lost inside that maelstrom of half-memories and half-crazed imaginings that swirled around her addled mind. Further back into the woods, Wilda glimpsed the familiar, shy eyeshine of Daxl glancing over the unusual pair from afar. The minute the bath was done and Lottie was gone he would come curl up in the tub, lick up droplets of pine oil that wouldn't rinse out and just snort and chirp with happiness. _

_Wilda was starting to feel cramped; she was getting too big to fit in this tub, to be washed like a baby. There was a slight, light brown pixie sitting gingerly on the edge of the rusted wash tub, cupping small handfuls of water and letting them drip over the child's bent, scarred knees. It seemed fascinated with the alternate paths the water droplets took as they slid down hairy shins. Its massive eyes widened and narrowed constantly with wonder, tilting its head this way and that._

_ "Your father was a healer, he was good man. Well. Maybe you are not Huldra, but there is some magic in you, child." _

_The old bat sounded strangely lucid for once. The girl leaned all the way back and looked up into her grandmother's wrinkled, withered face; those murky brown eyes suddenly clear and full of warmth. It would be the last happy memory of her darkly wild and charmed childhood, the last moments of innocence she truly knew… _

"Expecto Patronum!"

And from her wand the honey badger exploded, all bright light and sharp little teeth and savage claws. The Dementor fled. And as she packed up her lecturing materials and left the venue Wilda started to wonder if it was time to go back to the magical world…


	2. Chapter 2: A stirring in the evening

Quietly reading through a list of teaching notes she had prepared for the following day, Wilda nursed her warm gin. Overhead, in the rafters of her hut, she heard the quiet rustle of something moving, watching. She smiled and carried on reading through her notes. Softly, professor Mellivora murmured;

"It's fine little one, you are not disturbing me."

The bowtruckle dropped down on the desk, landing on all fours. It spent a moment importantly examining the grain of the wood in the table, then stood up to peer at her, as though it had only just noticed her sitting there.

She avoided looking at it directly and put her glass back on the table. Suddenly, the bowtruckle lumbered over to her glass and dropped something in it before she could snatch it away. Her sudden movement to save the drink made it hiss at her in fear and her hand froze, hesitant in mid air. These little bastards bit hard.

It then spat in the glass and glowered balefully at her before leaping back up into the rafters and spidering off into the night. She leaned over the desk to peer into the glass and sighed. A cigarette butt was floating in the gin.

Students sneaking out to smoke at night was one thing. But sneaking into the forbidden forest to smoke was quite another. And they would had to have gone pretty deep into the forest to have so offended the tiny tree guardian.

She got up from her chair and slipped a dark-terracotta leather jacket over her shoulders. Before she left, she fished the offending butt from her glass, which was goopy with bowtruckle spit. Then she headed out into the cool night air and made for the dark forest.

As she approached the forest, the bowtruckle hissed and growled at her from one of the trees.

"Oh, just chill!"

She snapped at it, not even bothering to look at it while crossing into treeline. The growling stopped.

She listened intently to forest, stepping gingerly over crunching earth. There was a clearing ahead and she was aware of other eyes around her peeking curiously into open space.

And then she heard the sounds of someone digging at the earth. At least the kids had not ventured too far in. She watched from the edge of the woods and was surprised to see only a single, womanly figure, on her haunches, in the middle of the clearing. Wilda did a startled double take; surely this silly dame was not taking _that_ sort of walk in the woods? Her eyes adjusting to the night, she realized the girl was actually drawing or tracing something in the earth. What was going on here?

She looked like a harmless student, but still, Wilda wanted to take no chances scaring the hell out of someone and getting hit with some nasty reflexive hex or jinx. She circled round the clearing and approached the woman from ahead, making sure to brush past branches and step as noisily as possible.

The girl appeared to be finishing up whatever it was she was doing and turned about as she did so. She became aware of Wilda and seemed to jump slightly, and a panicky-sounding wail pierced the night air.

"What do you want!"

_Why so jumpy? _Wilda thought with satisfaction. _Are we up to no good? _She continued walking straight toward the young woman without breaking her stride, saying nothing. If this was a student, she was going to make sure the idiot thought twice about entering the forest willynilly at night again.

As she came into the stranger's personal space, the irate teacher grasped her free arm, pulled her intimately close and forced the cigarette butt into her palm aggressively.

"The creatures of the forest kindly request that you _don't _leave your trash at their doorstep."

She spoke in the soft, deathly polite tone that always had a very sobering effect on her students.

Then she bobbed back lightly out of the younger woman's face, releasing her just as suddenly and pulled out her wand;

"Lumos."

She studied the girl's face. She looked young enough to be a student, but there was just a little too much strain in the skin around those eyes. Wilda suddenly withdrew to a less aggressive posture, doubting whether she had been right to come on so strongly.

"I'm Professor Mellivora, and I'd like to know just what it is you are doing here. Are you aware of how dangerous this place is at night?"

Her tone shifted to one of exasperated concern as she regarded the young woman's face, and waited for her to respond. The girl looked down at the mucousy cigarette butt, trying to comprehend.

"I - I don't... I didn't mean to offend anyone - or, or the creatures of the forest, miss. Professor. I'm sorry."

She looked around for something and then, resigned, grimaced and planted the cigarette butt in the pocket of her coat. She seemed tired. Using the heel of her boot, the girl smoothed out the sand she had been tracing in. Wilda thought she caught a glance of some runic impressions before they were erased.

The young girl turned around started making her way through the forest, as though on her way back to the castle. Wilda hurried after her, annoyed. This girl was not going to get away with being out of bed this late.

She strode smoothly up to the young woman, who had her head down, carefully navigating the fiorbidden forest's floor. Wilda was tall for most women, and she quickly caught up.

"Listen here, young lady. There will be repurcussions. Students are not allowed out of bed at this hour, and are certainly never allowed in the forbidden forest, unless accompanied by a teacher. If a centaur had found you smoking - "

"I'm not a student."

Wilda cursed herself. Trust her to get someone's back up, her first week on the job.

"Oh! Well then I'm sorry miss - uh?"

"I'm not even a witch."

The young woman's voice was now hard and bitter.

"Just the disappointing squib offspring of the esteemed Professor Black."

They broke the wall of trees. Wilda stopped and just watched as the girl carried on walking, making for the schoolground's gates.

Wilda was completely bewildered. The headmaster had never mentioned having any daughters. The girl stopped and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, she cupped her hands around her mouth and seemed to be trying to get it going with a lighter, with little success. Wilda called out to her, and hurried to catch up again.

"Wait. That won't work on Hogwarts grounds."

She pulled out her wand and tapped the end of the young woman's cigarette ever so lightly, muttering the spell as she did so.

"_Inscendio_."

The end of her ciggie glowed as the girl took a drag. She smiled sadly at Wilda.

"Thanks. You're new here. The new Care of Magical Creatures Professor?"

Wilda nodded, and then shook her head when the other woman offered her a cigarette.

"Wilda."

"Well, Wilda. Soon you will learn that it isn't good for your reputation - or your career - to hang out with me. Thanks for the light."

She turned to go again but Wilda stopped her.

"Who are you?"

"Lissy. Melissa Black."

She carried on walking and Wilda watched her until she left the castle grounds. Then she started to make her way back to Hagrid's hut - _No_, she thought - _her_ hut.


End file.
